Your Time, Your Language

There are always various computer or mobile platform based games and tools for language learning. We have dictionary and translator apps galore (albeit, we are often warned by professors against using such translators).  But sometimes these ready made lessons on the fly are all we have the time for.  There are stay-at-home parents, full time employees and busy adults everywhere who either don't have the time or simply don't have the confidence to enroll in a semester of language study.  So is there any truly viable alternative?

I recently encountered the mobile app and computer based program Duolingo via a CNET article on best Android language apps.  I thought it was all very interesting but the blurb was incredibly brief and I have an iphone rather than Android phone.  However this program was brought to my attention again another day. I work part time at a bookstore and was assisting a woman who was looking for Spanish workbooks to try and retrieve her previously fluent Spanish skills.  She was perhaps around 50 years of age, well spoken and certainly did not seem to be even considering registering for college courses.  I mentioned to her I had read about Duolingo, but that I found it under an article for Android.  She then laughed and pulled out her iphone, on which she had the app.  Thus, I discovered it is also available for Apple platforms and that this somewhat elderly woman actually ventured to use the program. She continued to explain she uses it on her computer as well and very much enjoyed the program.

After this encounter I decided to look a little more seriously at this app. It seems hard to believe that a little time clicking through a game would improve Spanish skills to any serious degree, and particularly I was curious about how it could help someone who used to be fluent.

According to the study conducted in 2012, testing a sample of exactly half men and women and whose average age was 34.9 years, such a program does indeed exist.  Not only did a great majority of the subjects report favorable interest in the program during their use, but there were significant gains in Spanish knowledge.  Their progress was tested by looking at pre- and post-test scores on WebCAPE (Web Based Computer Adaptive Placement Exam).  This is the same sort of test used to place students into the appropriate level of language course at the university level.

Over a period of eight weeks using this program, students showed an average of 8.1 pt improvement per one hour of study on Duolingo.  The conclusion was that through 26-49 hours of study, one could theoretically progress to a level equivalent to that of one semester of college language coursework.  Considering that 55.3% of the participants were full-time employees, this alternative is a great relief as compared to an in-person course, which often requires students to meet four days a week for at least an hour.  Adding in the driving and parking time for these classes, costs of gas, supplies, textbooks etc. the mobile app alternative would be much welcomed.  Another interesting factor that significantly affected the results was the reason for studying. Although the majority were using the app for personal interest, it was instead those who studied for travel that showed the highest improvement.

I suppose here my only questions would be how this translates into speaking ability as the tests did not include an assessment of spoken proficiency, and any in-person classwork would provide and enhance that aspect. I also wonder why such a large gap (26-49 hours) to cite an "average" time needed to equate to one semester class.  Over a testing period of only 8 weeks, it seems a large range to conclude with.  Finally, although not necessarily a question, I agree with the research conclusion that recommends Duolingo include a clock to record hours spent in a week/month/etc. of time studying. A user may not realize that any hiatus taken due to busy schedules may be as long as it has, and any language teacher would agree that below a certain time (in the case of this study, 2 hours a week) the study would not help improve skills in any way.

Overall, I would say between this study, CNET reviews, and the nice woman at the bookstore, we can conclude that there is an option for self study that amounts to actual language improvement and one of this options would include Duolingo.

Language on the Go

One of my primary motivations for studying education (particularly language in my case) and technology is to consider where it might go. I constantly have experienced and seen in others a complacency about language learning. This is especially true of English speakers, which has come to be accepted as a pretty much fact.  Combined with a rising tendency to multitask, often misconstrued by traditional educators as form of ADD in students, there is a growing population who have simply decided that language learning is not convenient and therefore not likely for them. And in a world that increasingly speaks English, many who become discouraged by the tediousness of language learning simply decide it isn't worth the effort.

I, however, believe we can use the tendency of people to multitask and the likelihood of them always having some sort of mobile tool on hand to our advantage.  Part of this is in the need to be working on something and/or entertain ourselves. How many with a smartphone would voluntarily sit waiting for a friend silently with the phone discretely put away? More likely you are scanning articles on BBC, checking emails, or even just playing Angry Birds. It doesn't really matter what you are doing, as long as you are doing something.

Image from Tip Tap Tones - referenced below

It is this market of time in a person's day that some developers have chosen to utilize.  The designers of an app called "Tip Tap Tones" have created a mobile "microtraining" game that can be utilized during fragments of free time throughout the day.

Researchers cite one of the most difficult aspects of learning Mandarin to be the perception of tones. Often the first year or two of university level language study is dedicated to understanding this complex and often entirely novel sound system.  Anyone familiar with the Critical Period Hypothesis knows that many believe part of our ability to learn a language fully is due to exposure. We do not even need to know what a sound means, but the fact we have heard it makes it likely to be learned in the future. On the other hand, lack of exposure before puberty results in a near impossibility to fully acquire given phonetic distinctions.  Relating to a child's first language acquisition, infants show signs of understanding the words, voice, and tone of a parent figure before they can speak.  This is due to the fact that they are able to hear and begin to perceive sounds even while still in the womb.  Much of our difficulty as English speakers with a language such as Mandarin is that this language is tonal. It heavily relies on tone and inflection for basic meaning distinctions rather than simply an expressive tool.  We may know that a rising inflection is a question, but even then we play around with the tone in our own speech, without our meaning being misconstrued in any way. In Mandarin Chinese however, the case is very different. As English speakers, most of us having never encountered a tonal language, our ears are simply not experienced to distinguish between tones because in our language it is of little importance.  Therefore, in learning a language such as this, the first thing to focus on is mere exposure and exercises in perception. We cannot be expected to reproduce differences we cannot hear.

The idea presented by Tip Tap Tones is a level based game that steadily increases in difficulty as the learner-player accumulates points.  In this way, they have managed to take one of the most complex and time consuming aspects of learning a given foreign language, and provided a simple, fun way for learners to practice  and learn without the feeling they have to make any heavy investment on time.  The results showed an average of 25% increase in ability to correctly identify tones in around 71 minutes of gameplay, spread over only three weeks. I'd certainly invest in having access to that app over mindlessly launching birds from a slingshot any day.

They concluded, "we have shown how our design of mobile microtraining has transformed a slow-paced, low-feedback drill into a fast-paced, high-feedback, learner-driven game playable abywhere."
*This app is available as a free Microsoft Research application on the Windows Phone marketplace.

This sort of quick, on the go access to language learning is the sort of concept that I have always been interested in. Is it possible to take a task that previously required years and years of classroom hours and homework drills, listening to a single voice for days upon days repeating information and transform it into something versatile, quick, and fun?  Why yes it certainly is. Given the variety of environments we now have access to, the fact that the classroom is no longer confined to an actual classroom, and the digital world allows a connection to unlimited voices and speakers we can transform this task quite easily with the help of applications such as Tip Tap Tones. Tones may be the aspect of beginning Mandarin that requires the most time and focus, but now that time can be spread out and easily completed throughout the user's normal day.  Focused classroom time or interaction can now be spent on vocabulary or other lessons, allowing the student to always be moving forward.  As we open our minds to possibilities such as mobile microtraining we can redefine the language curriculum and credit the learner with individualized training at their own discretion, which often gives learners more motivation and confidence to continue.

Reference: Tip Tap Tones: Mobile Microtraining of Mandarin Sounds.  (2012).

 MobileHCI’12, September 21–24, 2012, San Francisco, CA, USA.